


Four Walls, Wash Basin, No Prison Bed

by sunsetmondays



Series: Prison!Dream [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, M/M, Pandoras Vault, Prison!Dream, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29067366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetmondays/pseuds/sunsetmondays
Summary: I wanted to write sexy prison!dream but when I did the research I fell into a hole about solitary confinement and just kinda started to roll with it. This is the end result of that.The morning begins with a slow sweat, warm black stone pressed against his bare back as he balances upon the precipice between dreamless dark and thoughtless awake. Somewhere far off is the constant rumble of molten stone boiling and dripping. It whispers like the wind, soured sulphurous in the burnt orange heat. Dream blinks his eyes open. The dull light cast from the lava-curtain is searing. He squeezes them back shut, throws an arm over his eyes, and blinks again. Only a careful glance at his single clock tells him day from night. With the sound of cracking joints and a groan dragged through his scratchy throat, he rises to mark another day passed within his collection of books.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: Prison!Dream [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2154249
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	Four Walls, Wash Basin, No Prison Bed

**Author's Note:**

> Rated teen because solitary confinement fucks you up, and I hopefully ended up expressing some of that in this fic. I don't want to go too into it for spoilers sake, but if you suspect you might be sensitive to any of the content within I recommend looking up the psychological impact of solitary confinement to give you an idea of the kind of things this fic explores.

The morning begins with a slow sweat, warm black stone pressed against his bare back as he balances upon the precipice between dreamless dark and thoughtless awake. Somewhere far off is the constant rumble of molten stone boiling and dripping. It whispers like the wind, soured sulphurous in the burnt orange heat. Dream blinks his eyes open. The dull light cast from the lava-curtain is searing. He squeezes them back shut, throws an arm over his eyes, and blinks again. Only a careful glance at his single clock tells him day from night. With the sound of cracking joints and a groan dragged through his scratchy throat, he rises to mark another day passed within his collection of books.

The memory is long-faded like the bruises upon his wrists, but there was a time when Tommy once came to visit, came to task him with purpose to pass the never-ending slough of days—his only penance lays half-written in the chest; half-forgotten as days turn to weeks turn to months without news—but Tommy never comes anymore. Whatever peace or anger Tommy had once come to lay claim to had long since been collared and reigned to follow whichever plots move beyond these four prison walls.

Dream toys at the pages of a book, thoughts and memos teasing the tip of his tongue. He tries to grasp them, swallow them. As he chokes on his own bile his mind is left blank and his eyes heavy. It would be nice to lie down again and feel the smooth stone against his skin. Maybe a bath would be nice too. Something to clean off this day's (this week's?) layer of salted grime from his skin. He eyes the clock again. He's due for a visitor soon: the only one he ever gets. His stomach curls in anticipation for the familiar creak of the visitor's platform. An unarmoured figure would part the sea of red, a halo of embers their crown to their domain. Then a faceless nod, a gift of raw potatoes kicked onto the obsidian ledge, and finally the sacrifice: the figure steps bravely into fire and flame, to be reborn tomorrow bringing gifts anew. Dream worships behind the sanctuary of a thick stone blockade.

He too was a god once, he believes. Or maybe he dreams? The thoughts are foggy in the half-light. He's just so tired now. He leans against his basin, thoughts wandering between the real and unreal. Some days he still wishes to hear another voice cut through the white noise and bring focus to these wonderings. He coughs up a scratchy word, slumps forward in defeat, and slurps water from his basin like a dog. He dips his face below the tepid blue and slips through the cracks in the drain back to the world of unawake. _A soft accented voice, gently rolling plains, 'wait come stand next to the flowers'_. He wrests his head back, gasping at air too thick for his lungs. The world around him dances and trips. His heart eagerly joins the fray, an offbeat tango that leads him to the puddle-corner, clutching with a claw-like grip at his chest. Water splashes needles upon his skin and static throbs louder and louder through his skull.

"Enough!" he croaks, and the syllables fall out like the rusty remnants of a name.

Breathe in, breathe out, eyes to the clock against the wall. One second, two seconds, three. Tepid water on his skin, sulphur-scent in his lungs, spitting magma in his ears. _Peace_. The seconds tick, tick, tick away as Dream sits sprawled in the damp corner of his cell. The dropper above stares down at him, blank and unreadable. The death it offers with its poison hidden above is too transient to tempt with the prospect of relief. There is no salvation in this house of god. Just four walls, a wash basin, and no prison bed.

Slowly, steadily like condensation coalescing upon the walls, the monotonous tick of the clock lulls Dream into a contended hum. The roiling magma curls wisps of a warm breeze into his chamber. The water is neither refreshing nor uncomfortable; it wicks away the sweat upon his skin and blends the barrier between body and numb. He closes his eyes and gently drifts...

Immeasurable time passes before the rhythmic clack of the platform pulls Dream back to reality. This time he pulls himself with a muted sense of dignity from the puddle-corner, commands disused muscles to stride him purposefully to the centre of his cell where his kneels. His head bows in reverence of the saintly gifts to come. He waits patient as a hound for the scrape of the wooden bowl against stone. One click, two clicks, the crack of stone against stone as the platform comes to rest against his obsidian island. Then amongst his lonely congregation, silence bar for his laboured breath.

His shoulders twitch, the wooden scrape doesn't come. The stone blockade falls, the wooden scrape doesn't come. Something brushes against his too-long hair, the wooden scrape doesn't come.

" _Dream?_ " a soft voice breathes; the wooden scrape doesn't come—

— _Dream_. His silent prayer halts as he plays the sounds on rewind in his mind. Something soft and warm glides over the stubble on his jaw. " _Dream_ ," the voice says again, coloured aching and blue. The hand tugs at his jaw, guiding his gaze up until he sees the apparition of a ghost. The ghost comes down to kneel before him, gently laying a bowl of potatoes—baked potatoes!—to the side. If the shadowy figures are saints, then this man is a prophet. "Dream," he says one final time, "I called in a favour with the guard." His vision drifts over a gentle smile crooked upon soft pink lips before he's forced to meet piercing brown eyes.

Something in the furthest reaches of his brain clicks into place. His body is wracked with a silent half-sob. "George," he whispers, pleads into the hand cupping his jaw. He sinks his weight into the softness, the morning-sun warmth, more starved than his aching gut could ever know to be. The hand presses, strokes. " _Georgegoergegeorge_ ," he says, and his throat burns at the words, but it would be sacrilege to hold this holy psalm at bay. Somewhere far away from this blessed touch his body trembles. Another hand comes to mirror the first upon his cheek and the two together hold him steady.

"Oh Dream," says George, "what have you done?"

The question hangs poignant in the air and all Dream wants to do is close his eyes and wrap himself wholly in this skin to skin feeling. A hand draws away from his face, replaced by a cold he hasn't known in months. It reaches down to grab and lift is wrist, fingers following the path of long-healed band marks before carefully lacing between Dream's. Dizzying pressure squeezes upon his knuckles, pulling him back to the question at hand.

"I—" Dream scrapes blood-crusted fingertips at the ledge of his memories. Months, years? Lifetimes ago there was something: a plan, a purpose, a betrayal. The loose rocks crumble and he blinks away the dust-rain. "Everything was going to be perfect," he says. "Me, you, _Tommy_ —" his fingers scrabble desperately upon the name "—the SMP. I just—" The words stretch over him like dark obelisks, clay cliffs turning to smooth obsidian. He begins to slip, slip, _slip_. "I just had to wait here for a while, George."

George leans forward until they touch forehead to forehead, nose to nose. Dream feels the blistering heat of his breath upon his lips. George's eyes crinkle tight at the corners, brows worried together, and gaze softened with something that whispers of pity.

"It's been a long while, George. I never meant for it to be this long."

"I know, Dream," says George, and Dream's not quite sure if he really does.

They sit for a moment, each breath coming slowly to match the other's. The familiarity raises goosebumps along Dream's skin. His muscles feel like rubber bands pulled to their very minute. Any moment, any wrong move and they would snap to whip back at George with shattering force. Each careful breath becomes halted, quicker, falling out of rhythm. His heart bubbles with the molten heat that encloses his ash-dark cage. Inchmeal he reaches with his free hand to pull George's other away from his cheek, each second marked by a glace into nothingness, watching that the band doesn't break. Dream can taste the sour behind George's thoughts, obscured by clouds of cotton-candy sweet. George is no prophet; he is the angel fallen, come to tempt Dream with his lies.

He is the caged animal, the penitent disciple, the ropeless climber come to have his mettle tested within the suffocating sanctuary of these four walls.

" _Dream_ ," George says again, and it comes as a despondent plea. It's a ' _no, don't do this_ ' and a ' _break, you weak and sickening traitor_ ' and a ' _my heart can forgive you if you there's an earnest sorry in yours too'_. The sound of it all is deafening. It splits his skull and screams in his ears and Dream prays to the saints for silence, for the heat to rise and cool until the truth precipitates out from the storm clouds above.

"I can't," Dream warns as the distance between them splits into a valley. The skin-touch calls the angel's hymn and the icy imprints left upon his skin ache for relief, but Dream is not weak. He is no traitor to his penance, no apostate to this igneous temple.

George's fingers slip limp from his wrist, lingering in their reach. "I understand," he says, voice thick. Dream doesn't quite believe that he does. George casts his eyes to the stone below. Dream feels the band within his body settle pliant and slack beneath his skin. "I know I shouldn't, but I miss you," George admits. His sigh sinks heavily in the steamy air. Dream studies unseen patterns in the space behind George's silhouette. His dirt-stained nails press crescent moons upon his thighs. George swallows the mass in his throat to leave room for his unabated thoughts.

"Once upon a time I loved you, and it's been hard to live with that knowing what you've done, what you did," he says. The corner of his bottom lip drags across his teeth and a flighty hand combs his fringe into disarray. "It's been so _hard_ , Dream." The man's name comes out like a curse.

Dream's nails press harder upon his skin. The words blanche the colour from his pallid skin. Dream blinks away flashes of memories. The squeeze of his eyelids leave sepia-toned imprints. _'I love you, George_ ,' _voice full of spring-time affection. The round-accented echo never comes but it doesn't need to. The lilac flush and squinted smile that lights up his eyes say it all_.

"Just— Just tell me you're sorry, Dream. It's all I need to hear!"

Dream blinks and blinks and blinks, but the image only stains darker. He searches for something, anything to pull him from this rancid prison. Each time he closes his eyes he feels the earth shift beneath his feet, rocks sliding and tumbling in a thunderous rumble to fill the valley between. When he looks up to the burning glory of his angel, the wings morph to a prophet's robes; he sees the prophet's promise of his absolution.

Still, the heat of the pit-fire licks at his skin. The magma glow burns bright in his irises and the erstwhile taste of godhood lingers upon his tongue _. Tommy, Tommy, Tommy; the key within his fist and the whole world beneath his feet. So, so close_ —

"I can't lie to you, George," he says, breath burning against his teeth, "I can't say that I truly am." The sulphurous air swells in a thick fog that presses against Dream's skin, lifts him in the air. The feeling is heady, like every nerve in his skin has been sent to rest and he's waiting for the inexorable static that's to come and burn his limbs. There's movement in the far echelons of his visions; the wall-numbed thrum of a solemn angel's song. After an infinity when the clouds finally clear he's lying sprawled across the obsidian. The sweat from his back sticks skin to heated stone.

A bowl of raw potatoes rests gingerly at the precipice of his obsidian cell. Dream drags himself, gut aching, to the morsels granted to keep him wanting. He fills his gut, marks another page in his book, and quietly ignores the cold, empty pangs buried deep within his chest.

~ ~ ~

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Also a shoutout to Thero for half-betaing this. I.e. I sent her what I had written yesterday and she pointed out a few of my errors but now she has DND so is unavailable to do that again and I'm morally obliged to taunt her by posting fic at a time when she cannot read it.
> 
> If you like my stuff you can find my writing blog [here](https://sunsetwrites.tumblr.com/) and my main blog [here](https://unofficial-cactus.tumblr.com/).
> 
> If you enjoyed this I'd love to here your thoughts and comments, and I'm an absolute fan of people sliding into the asks over at tumblr for fic ideas / au discussions, or just a friendly chat.
> 
> P.S. If you think there's a little continuity error in there it was 100% intentional and it's up to you what exactly that little change of detail means.


End file.
